![]() ![]() Shrines still give hearts and stamina, but the wilder trio of fuse, rewind, and ascend leads to more intuitive puzzles. Sidequests are deeper and more numerous, with richer characters infused with that Zelda zany charm. Just like the world, many systems return in Tears, but with improvements. Legendary weapons, like the Biggoron sword, can be repurchased for the high price of poes, tiny blue flames dotted across the dark world. Swords last far longer now, once fused, though they do still break. A Bokoblin boss will drop a horn that will improve your weapon's damage by a huge amount a simple broadsword can be encrusted with Hinox bones. Fruits can now be attached to arrows to create elemental damage. Mazes have lifted up into the sky a network of new caves pockmark the land.Īs a relentless collectathon, this Zelda reminded me of old Rareware games, but it importantly adds new motivation to anchor combat and harvesting. Kakariko Village has been bombarded by ruins a corporate mining company has taken over Death Mountain. You can quite literally navigate using the old map of BOTW, but time and the cataclysm have reshaped Hyrule. It feels like returning after many years of travel to find that a relative has renovated your beloved home (and added two extra wings to your house). If the primary emotion Breath instilled was the awe of exploring a new land, here it is the nostalgia of revising an old one. The ridiculous depth of the sandbox here feels like a call to creators in the streaming era-people are still making BOTW content years later this game is designed to mushroom that participation. Occasionally fiddly controls are alleviated by an auto-build feature, which lets you save schematics to instantly conjure old creations. And the creatively bankrupt, like me, will glue 10 logs together over and over again for a magnificent log centipede suitable for each and every obstacle. The truly creative will make things as yet undreamed of the mildly creative will make soaring hovercrafts and balloons and rockets, rumbling jeeps and old-timey horse-drawn carts. Long term, this will be where Tears will look most different to Breath. Nintendo supercharges that dream here with Ultrahand, a power that allows players to glue rockets, fire hydrants, wheels, fans, control sticks, mirrors, time bombs, and a litany of other objects together to create whatever their minds can conjure. BOTW players on YouTube have become infamous for their homebrew flying, driving, and sailing machines. To traverse these new lands, Nintendo has mimicked the tricks of their most loyal fans. Some will stay above the surface-away from the sterile darkness. ![]() Some will love scaling its vast dark cliffs for new fights. ![]() Without a doubt, the depths will prove the most divisive aspect of Tears. He is not able to simply eat 4,000 apples and go on. If an enemy hits Link or he stands on the Gloom, his heart is permanently erased until he returns to a checkpoint. This place feels built for combat, a proving ground governed by a limited heart pool. Down here are poisoned versions of Hynoxes and Lynels, and other nasty new things not to be spoiled. Like Minecraft, players must brave these depths for precious materials, and, like Minecraft, they must contend with vicious enemies. It is impossible with a piece of art of this size and potentiality to say anything completely definitive, but after nearly 50 hours of gameplay, I can say this: Tears of the Kingdom is not as viscerally astonishing as Breath of the Wild, but it refines the first game’s systems to the point that they now feel antiquated. Tears of the Kingdom takes the company's new-era Zelda formula and runs rampant, fulfilling many of the promises that Breath of the Wild made and broke. But the TL DR is that Nintendo has switched from revolution to evolution. There’s also no truth in the slander that Nintendo has been complacent since Breath’s release in 2017. It is not that the game takes no risks-there are mechanics here that could have proven disastrous handled by a lesser developer. Duly, Breath’s follow-up, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, out tomorrow, is very much a sequel. Anyone with even a cursory interest in Zelda could recite these facts in their sleep, but stating them plainly hammers home a simple truth: There was not a snowball’s chance on Death Mountain that Nintendo would reinvent the series a second time. ![]()
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